Passageway safety gates are used in doorways, hallways, stairways, and other like passageways inside and outside of homes that contain infants, children, and pets. Adults use safety gates to establish barricades to block off a portion of the home so as to prevent access by the infants, children, or pets. For instance, many safety gates are used at the top and bottom of stairs to prevent a child who is still learning to walk from falling down the stairs. Safety gates are used in passageways of different dimensions; while many passageways have a common size dictated by local building codes, some may still be wide and others narrow, depending on the use and nature of the passageway. Safety gates are available in a variety of arrangements for such different widths; some safety gates have a fixed width to be installed in a passageway of one of several standard dimensions. Other safety gates are adjustable in width and can be adjustably configured to fit in doorways, hallways, stairways, and other passageways of differing widths. Still other safety gates include hinged doors that allow the safety gate to be installed and still provide ingress and egress to adults. Yet still other gates are mounted in the passageway for temporary installation, while others are permanently mounted in the passageway, as by screwing or anchoring into the wall.
Most safety gates are constructed with a plurality of frame members, namely, horizontal top and bottom frame members and vertical frame members. The rails or frame members in such gates can be quite ugly. Other safety gates have a peripheral frame and a mesh panel stretched across the peripheral frame. While these gates may be more aesthetically pleasant than those with rails or frame members, they can still stand out in a house. Indeed, most safety gates are purely functional and lack any ornamental aspects. In most homes, this is aesthetically jarring. Such safety gates appear out of place and disjointed in homes in which interior design and decoration is important to the homeowner.
Various attempts have been made to provide ornamentation to safety gates. However, such attempts have chiefly targeted children as the audience for the ornamentation, with animal faces emblazoned on the safety gates, with twinkling lights, or with other child-oriented displays. These approaches turn the safety gate into an entertainment device, which can actually attract a child rather than blending in with the surrounding decor. Moreover, many of the decorations are permanently attached on the safety gate as part of the safety gate, or must be installed before the safety gate is installed in the passageway. An improved device for concealing or blending the safety gate into the interior design of a home is needed.